The Burn
by laundryflowers
Summary: Breaking Dawn-AU. What if Renesmee was a boy? What if Bella wasn't a perfect newborn? Since Jacob doesn't imprint on Bella's baby, the treaty has been broken. War has been declared. And what about the Volturi?


**A/N: This is a little 'what if' piece set in Breaking Dawn. What if Renesmee had been a boy? What if Bella wasn't a perfect newborn? **

**Disclaimer: All things Twilight belongs to the lovely Stephenie Meyer.**

Breaking Dawn, page 371:

_I tried to feel my heart, to find it, but I was so lost inside my own body. I couldn't feel the things I should, and nothing felt in the right place. I blinked and I found my eyes. I could see the light. Not what I was looking for, but better than nothing. _

OoOoOoO

As my eyes struggled to adjust, Edward whispered, "You were right."

My head began to throb, and I could hear my heartbeat quickening, weak as it was. I looked to my right, and my eyes landed on the blurry figure of perfection resting in Edward's arms, topped with mahogany brown hair.

"Wh-what?" I breathed.

Edward's lips tugged at the sides. "It's a boy. You were right, Bella." Our baby cried, and my heart tightened. He needed me, he needed his mother. I began to ask Edward to give me our son, so I could nurture him, but before I could form the words, my mouth began to fill with blood. I choked and sputtered as the thick liquid began to run into my airway, and my vision began to blacken once again. I tried to move, to pick myself up, but I found the harder I tried, the more I slipped into the darkness, and the less I could see of my two favorite people in the world. My Edward and my Edward Jacob. I decided to let it take me, then, so that if I was dying, and Edward couldn't save me, at least I could get a semi-clear image of them to take with me.

"Ed-," I tried, to no avail. A steady stream of blood began to run out of my nose. _Edward, please live!_ I had wanted to say. I remembered his plans for himself if I were to perish. My mind, projecting my life story before my eyes, remembered our time in Volterra, when he had decided not to live without me. _Please live for our Edward Jacob!_ His promise to Aro to change me into one of them popped into my head, and I panicked for an entirely different reason. The Volturi would be back, to check on my species status. And instead of finding a newborn vampire, they would be greeted with an impossibility. An orphaned impossibility. An orphaned miracle.

Of course, our miracle might not have even made it that far. When I died, the wolves would declare war on my family, and they would all be torn to pieces. Carlisle, with his endless compassion. Esme with her intense ability to love. Alice, with her bubbly persona, which balanced out Jasper's stoic demeanor. Emmett's bear-like hugs and Rosalie's flawless beauty. Edward, the only thing that mattered in the world. Our Edward Jacob... All of it would be gone, burned to ashes, blown away in the wind. The Cullen clan would be no more, all because of me. Because I succumbed to the darkness eating away at me, allowed myself to be pulled under into death. They would be gone because of my selfishness. I knew then that I could not die, no matter how much I wanted to. My death meant their deaths, and that I could not carry with me into whatever afterlife I would get after practically sacrificing them myself.

I needed to live for Edward. I needed to live for our son.

"Jacob, take the baby!" I heard my husband cry.

"Give him to me," Jacob growled. Though I could see nothing, I turned my head towards Jacob, shocked at his behavior. Only a few days ago he wanted to kill my baby, and now he wanted to hold him?

No, that was not the case.

In my blindness, I heard a sickening crack.

In my blindness, I heard Edward screaming for Jasper.

In my blindness, I heard Alice and Jasper's snarls and growls.

In my blindness, I heard Edward's soft murmurings to me before he plunged the syringe of venom into my heart before biting into my jugular.

In my blindness, I could not hear my baby.

OoOoOoO

"_You've seen Alice's vision, Edward. You know it's going to happen."_

_I could hear a soft growl building in his chest, and I placed my hand upon his cheek to calm him. I traced the length of his nose, his eyelids, the fullness of his lips. I watched his brilliant skin reflect diamonds and I unwrapped myself from his arms and flipped over to straddle him._

"_I'm sorry," I whispered. "I didn't mean to ruin our day."_

_His face softened. "Alice's visions are subjective, love."_

_I cast my glance across the meadow, to a tiny bird happily singing it's song and leaned forward so that our faces were inches apart._

"_But Edward..." I whined._

"_Bella..." he whined in a sad imitation of my voice. He brushed a loose strand of hair behind my ear. I giggled._

"_You are the most stubborn creature on the entire planet, Edward Cullen."_

"_I think I know of one other person."_

OoOoOoO

_My eyes burn with tears, my face wet and red. _

"_Why don't you want me, Edward?" I choked out, my voice cracking._

"_Of course I want you, Bella! Sweetheart, please, don't cry!" He said desperately._

"_But not forever," I hiccuped. "You're gonna let me... get old... and die!"_

"_Sweetheart, I do want you forever! But I will not damn you to this -"_

_He was interrupted by my crying._

OoOoOoO

"_Alice will do it," I snapped, my voice filled with bitterness. "She'll do it, and there's nothing you can do about it!"_

"_The hell there isn't," he growled._

_I spun around to face him. "You're so intent on keeping me human when you know how much easier it will be if I'm not!"_

"_Easier?" He said through clenched teeth. "You think your life will be... easier?!"_

"_So much easier," I ground out._

_He grabbed me by shoulders, angling me so that our faces were mere inches apart._

"_To you," he snarled, "easier is hiding in your home when it's warm and sunny?"_

"_Edw-"_

"_To you, easier is being abruptly cut off from everyone you know? Your friends, your family?"_

"_Please-" _

"_Easier," he spit out, "is needing to relocate every few years because of your inability to age? Easier is sitting through the hell of high school year after year?!"_

"_I didn't-"_

"_Easier is never being to make connections with anyone outside your coven? Easier is the constant burn in the back of your throat? Easier is never being truly satisfied with your diet?!"_

_I realized he was no longer speaking to me, but merely speaking his thoughts aloud._

OoOoOoO

These were my thoughts during my transformation.

How many times had I asked – no, begged – Edward to change me? How many perfect afternoons had been ruined because of my pleadings? How many times had I told him how much easier our lives would be if he just bit me? As I burned, I couldn't help but laugh internally as I thought about how romantic I thought it would be when he turned me. How he would kiss his way from the spot beneath my ear, down my neck, and sensually lick the length of my jugular before finally biting down. I think I imagined I might even moan or whisper a soft encouragement to him to do it again.

A few weeks before the wedding, Edward sat me before his family as they told me about their newborn experiences. Carlisle told me of the agony of keeping quiet while he burned, in fear that someone would find and kill him. He told me of how he had tried to kill himself after he had the sudden urge to kill a little girl he had known well as a human while she took a walk in the woods alone. He told me of how it took every single atom of control he could muster to not rip her throat out and drain her dry. Carlisle told me how he knew he could never return home to his vampire-hunting preacher father, because he had turned into the very thing they had been trying to kill. He told me of how his self-control was the product of three-hundred years worth of experience.

I watched as Carlisle wrapped his arms around Esme while she sobbed. I quietly said to her that she didn't need to say anything she didn't want to. She said it was important. So I listened with wide eyes as she revealed to me in excruciating detail of every time she slipped up. The first incident was a few weeks after her transformation. Carlisle hadn't wanted to leave her alone, but there had been an emergency in town and his services were needed. Edward had wanted to hunt bigger game, so he had taken a week long trip to Canada, thousands of miles away from them.

"I shouldn't have left you alone," murmured Carlisle.

"It's not your fault," she whispered, forcing a smile.

They shouldn't have been in the woods, she said to me. Carlisle had made sure to build their house miles away from town. Those sweet little boys shouldn't have been in the woods.

But they were in the woods.

Carlisle had made sure to hide the evidence. It would not be the last time he would have to do so.

Emmett – lovable, not-serious, goofy, Emmett – had taken on a somber tone that night. It was three months after his change. He had gotten overly-confident in his self-control, and wanted to test it a bit. Long story short, he told me, he made it to the edge of town and an elderly couple had paid the price.

Carlisle, once again, hid the evidence.

Alice awoke from her transformation alone, her creator nowhere to be seen. She had no idea what happened. She could not remember any part of her human life, and could not remember the burn. She didn't know her own name. Alice was practically born a vampire, and felt no remorse as the sweet, red liquid of a housewife ran thickly down her throat. No, the remorse came later. Her visions were stronger than ever before, and it scared her. Human blood was her only comfort for the next thirty years, as she struggled to find Jasper, the man in her visions. She had been all alone, and therefore hadn't needed a name to go by. She was nameless until Jasper finally did some experimental hypnosis on her, the only thing he could coax out being the name Alice.

And so Alice she was.

Rosalie had no regrets in the killing department. She had never tasted human blood and the murders she committed were deserving, she said. She only hated the stillness of vampirism, the never-changing aspect. She wanted pretty babies and a husband to kiss her when he came home.

Jasper tried so hard not to let the emotions of his prey overcome him as he fed. Maria had brainwashed him into her lifestyle so much, humans were referred to as prey. He tried to tell himself that it was alright. It was natural. God the Almighty had created a food chain, and Jasper happened to be at the top of it. It would be like telling a cheetah not to eat a zebra. It wasn't natural to do so. Jasper repeated this thought in his mind every time he fed. He thought about it when he felt their fear.

At last came my Edward's story.

"I've already told you about my rebellious years hunting humans intentionally," he said. "I've never talked about my newborn time, though."

Edward had been overcome with his new found gift in the beginning. Soon after his transformation, Carlisle and Edward moved into the deep wilderness, miles away from any human. There they stayed, for one year, just the two of them and wild animals. It wasn't Edward who thought he was ready, but Carlisle.

"I was so selfish," whispered Carlisle. "I wanted to be a doctor again."

Carlisle, being satisfied that Edward had managed not to kill anyone within his first year, decided it was time to move again, this time amongst humans.

Carlisle's guilt-stricken face tightened my heart. "I had been so foolish in not desensitizing him. He hadn't even smelled a human before. He only knew the scent of vampires and animals."

A pretty fifteen-year-old girl had gone out for milk, and never returned to her mother.

OoOoOoO

I had made a mockery of their suffering by romanticizing my change.

The thought repeated itself on a loop as I burned.

_This is what you wanted,_ my mind sneered. _You finally got what you wanted!_

The pain of James' bite was nothing. The pain of drowning was nothing.

Sheer agony coursed through my veins for four days. _Edward said it was only three!_ It was only one day more. One day was usually nothing in any situation. You're getting married in one day! You're essay is due in one day! You'll see your favorite band in one day!

But with this kind of pain, every second mattered.

I counted every second that passed, wanting it to be the last one.

On the three-hundred-sixty-four thousand and fifth second, I began to feel my heart beat slow.

Ba-dump.

Ba...dump.

Ba...

I opened my eyes to the site of Edward, who had been with me the whole time. I smiled at him, relief flooding my system.

"I did it," I cheered, "It's over!"

He smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes.

I placed my hand to his cheek. "What's wrong, Edward? Where's our son?"

He cupped my face, stroking my cheek. "Bella..." he croaked, "There was an incident."

No.

**A/N: Yes, I made Bella burn for four days! There will be an explanation. She got it easy with two days in the book, lol. I'm going to continue this, I swear. I have so many ideas, but decided to end it there for today.**


End file.
